<p>The theme of this year's International Test Conference, "stressing the fundamentals," has two aspects. First, over the past 40 years, the test community has developed several fundamental concepts, including fault models, automatic test-pattern generation (ATPG), and DFT. In addition, fundamental techniques such as functional test, scan, burn-in, and I_DDQ test are key to modern test technology. Emphasizing these techniques is important as circuits become denser, faster,and more dificult to test. These same trends, though, also lead to a second type of stress: Advances in circuit technology are pushing these fundamental approaches toward their limits. The articles in this special ITC section explore this idea of stressing the fundamentals from various angles.</p>